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"The Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from innocence."
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"All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone, let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down."

"Vin paused. "And you have all of these religions memorized?""As much as is possible," Sazed said. "Their prayers, their beliefs, their mythologies. Many are very similar -- break-offs or sects of one another.""Even still, how can you remember all of that?""I have...methods," Sazed said."But, what's the point?"Sazed frowned. "The answer should be obvious, I think. People are valuable, Mistress Vin, and so--therefore--are their beliefs."

"Beware: open-mindedness will often say, 'Everything is permissible except a sharp opinion."

"Just because you believe in something, you cannot expect others to respect for your belief! They may even make fun of it! All you have to do is to be peaceful at any time, with everyone! Something holy for you may be just a rubbish for others! All you have to do is to be peaceful at any time, with everyone!"

"I am usually able to tolerate all kinds of victims of indoctrination except those who have been infected with xenophobia, racism, or homophobia."

"A religious individual may most gloriously carry out his or her own rituals, as a part of his or her cultural identity, but the moment, that person starts to build a wall of separation between the self and the rest of humanity, coaxed by the textual commands of a scripture, the healthy religiousness turns into dangerous fundamentalism, which is a threat to both the self and the society."

"Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic."
Explore more quotes by Flannery O'Connor

"To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness."

"The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a story as if it were a research problem for which any answer is believable so long as it is not obvious, then I think students will never learn to enjoy fiction. Too much interpretation is certainly worse than too little, and where feeling for a story is absent, theory will not supply it."

"Hazel Motes sat at a forward angel on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the other end of the car."

"What one has as a born Catholic is something given and accepted before it is experienced. I am only slowly coming to experience things that I have all along accepted. I suppose the fullest writing comes from what has been accepted and experienced both and that I have just not got that far yet all the time. Conviction without experience makes for harshness."

"Lord, I believe; help my unbelief'... is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith."

"He has the mistaken notion that a concern with grace is a concern with exalted human behavior, that it is a pretentious concern. It is, however, simply a concern with the human reaction to that which, instant by instant, gives life to the soul. It is a concern with a realization that breeds charity and with the charity that breeds action. Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence."

"His plate was full but his fists sat motionless like two dark quartz stones on either side of it."
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